


Bubbles Always Pop

by Skairunner



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Bombs, Canon Compliant, Downward Spiral, Friendship, Gen, Stress, Tinkering, Tragedy, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-16 02:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14154483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skairunner/pseuds/Skairunner
Summary: Bakuda is nothing more than a footnote in theParahumansuniverse, an insane terrorist who was defeated at every turn until her death at the hands of Lung in the Birdcage. Who was Bakuda? What did she hope for, dream for? We follow the story of Ellen Chua, a sophomore student double majoring in art and business-econ at Cornell University as she struggles with the pressure to succeed.





	1. Chapter One

"Yes, Mother,” Ellen Chua muttered, trying to concentrate on her economics assignment. She had the harshest professor for Economics of Global Business in all of Cornell, Max Amurao. She _needed_ to do well. She held her cellphone between ear and shoulder as she jotted down quick calculations on a piece of scrap paper with pencil. No point in making the answer sheet messy.

"You know both me and father are trusting you. You are a good student, yes, but you need _great_ grades to get a good job. You can do it."

Ellen clenched her teeth. "Yes, Mother. I know."

"Your grandfather sold his house back in Singapore to give your father an education, you know, and—"

Ellen tuned her mother's voice out. Tried. It didn’t really work when you already knew everything the other person would say, the same way an actor could perfectly recite their lines while drunk and high. It was obvious. Study well. Don't be a delinquent. Make your father proud. Every time.

She called every two days.

Ellen felt her pencil give way. She looked down. She had pressed it so hard that the tip had broken off.

“We love you,” Mother said. “Don’t stay up too late.”

“I know,” Ellen said. Mother hung up. Ellen threw her pencil at the wall. it bounced off and fell into the trash can. She stared at the can for too long, then forced herself to pick up a new pencil.

“I did _not_ sleep at all,” she heard Katie Kim tell Scott Bradley in EGB the next day.

“Yeah, I had three things due this week, two today. Coffee’s my new best friend.”

Ellen was in three of the same classes as Scott. This is why you didn’t procrastinate, she silently told the back of Scott’s head.

“Ugh, I hate Amurao so much. I had to stay up ‘til four to get it done.” Ellen wasn’t capable of doing that, because the following day she’d be essentially non-functional. She wished she could, though.

“Shit,” Scott said sympathetically.

“Like, Johnson moved assignment _two_ to next week—”

The man in question walked in, and the class immediately fell silent. “Good morning,” Professor Amurao said. “Last week we introduced the three major fiscal policies of modern economies, modern as in after Scion appeared. Some of you complained to administration that the recitation leaders tested you on material we did not cover in class. I did say at the start of the semester that the reading is mandatory. Read the syllabus. Read the materials. It’s not optional. Now, recall from last week that—”

He was the only professor who’d do that, and also the only professor to assign one homework assignment every two weeks. Problem sets, reading material, case studies. Ellen usually had over fifty pages to read a week, and spent so many hours on just this one class. But she was on top of it all. She’d been called on during recitation, too, and had passed with flying colors. None of the assignments had been returned yet, but she had compared answers with some classmates and it’d been correct.

She stifled a yawn as the professor moved onto austerity measures. The coffee she had had first thing at six AM was wearing off. She’d need another.

Starbucks cup in hand and wolfing down a croissant, she made her way to the one class in her entire schedule this semester she actually liked. She felt a little manic, the sort of mood that happened when she was tired enough that she didn’t feel tired anymore, but that was okay.

“The Hellenistic Buddhas were fairly different to their Eastern counterparts,” the professor said. “There’s the facial expressions, the hand positions, and the, you know, the contexts they were drawn in. Can someone tell me what this says about _why_ this happens?”

Ellen immediately raised her hand. She had wanted to major in art history. She’d shown her freshman schedule to Mother, one with Calculus II, Introduction to Business, Freshman Writing Seminar, and Introduction to Medieval Art.

“You can’t get a job with art,” Mother said. “Why not business? Cornell is a good business school.”

“I enjoy art,” Ellen muttered.

“I can’t let you do _art_ ,” Father had said sternly. “You’d be throwing away a Cornell education.”

In the end, the compromise they had worked out was her majoring in both. It was more work. But she liked art a lot more than she did business. It felt like she lived for the art classes. If your grades drop below _cum laude_ levels, Father had warned, you have to drop art history. So maybe she really did live for the art.

The three hour class felt a lot shorter than it was. Too short before she was back to desperately attacking her workload past midnight, trying to work faster than new homework was assigned. She was reminded of something an instructor in high school had said—that you had to work efficiently, not just hard. Well, she couldn’t do efficient, so she had to make up for it with more time spent. A single sentence of a question kept her awake for another hour before she could go to bed, mind awhirl with the ramifications of modern global trade policy.

“Amurao posted the grades,” Jinzler said to Ellen nonchalantly after lunch at the cafeteria. She was one of her few friends. Honestly, Ellen wasn’t quite sure how that had happened, considering how much time Ellen spent studying. Jinzler majored in Econ, so they shared a couple classes.

Ellen looked up from the text she was composing as a reply to Mother. “For the assignments?”

Jinzler took a long drag from her cigarette. She was standing one step away from the dotted black “no smoking” line around the Business building. “Yep. And it’s per problem. Annoying as hell to check.”

Ellen looked down at her phone again, one thumb on 3 and the other on 4. The half-finished word _othd_ blinked on the screen. She wasn’t sure whether she should ask her to elaborate. Something coiled in her gut. “So uh”—she coughed nervously—”how was it?”

“Pretty damn terrible.”

“Really?” She didn’t want to, but she wrenched her gaze away from the screen towards Jinzler. Away from Mother, who waited. Jinzler was looking down at the cigarette between her fingers, rolling it a little.

“Yep.”

“That sucks. Sorry.” Ellen tried to type out another word on her phone, but her fingers were numb and the letters just tangled together into an insensical mess.

“Me too. Wanna check yours?” Jinzler held out her iPhone.

No, Ellen wanted to scream at her. I don’t want to check my grades. Ellen loosened her grip on her phone instead, and smiled a little. “Nah, I can wait.”

Jinzler raised a brow, then shrugged and breathed out smoke, away from Ellen. “How bout dinner tomorrow?”

Ellen waited for her laptop to boot up. It was an old, heavy Dell, too heavy to bother lugging around for class, but it did wifi and it did Word, so it was good enough. She navigated to the page. Assignment one, total of thirteen points. Half the problems were flat zeroes. She stared. Then she clicked the _back_ button and waited a century for the slow machine to load the pages. Assignment two, fifteen points. It didn’t make any sense, not even a little. She’d spent so much time…! And there were no comments explaining how it’d been marked, why she got points off. Just the one cold number that told her she’d failed. She almost didn’t, but she checked assignment three . Five points. All out of a hundred. How? Why? She couldn’t have gotten it wrong. She needed it to be not wrong. She needed every grade point she could get.

Ellen opened Outlook and typed out an email to the professor.

Dear Professor, I’ve received my grades and would like if I could talk to you about how it was graded, the score was much lower than I expected

She frowned at the email. She had to erase and rewrite the last sentence three times because her hands shook so much. Her cell phone buzzed. _Another_ message from Mother? She glared at her phone, then popped out the battery. Her email client dinged. Just one line.

“Yes. Come to office hours tomorrow. Amurao.”

She paced uneasily in front of the professor’s office, five minutes before office hours started. Two fifty five PM. Some professors had their door open even before their office hours, but it seemed Amurao wasn’t that sort.

The door opened. “Ah. Ms. Chua. Come in.” She did. The office was smaller than she expected. Bookshelves filled with thick books with serious-looking titles like _Unexpected Competition_ and _Defensive Publishing_ lined two walls, and the professor’s dark wood desk was on the far end. A small round table with a short stack of paper on it and with two seats took up the rest of the room. Professor Amurao sat at the chair on the far side of the table, and Ellen took the other one.

“The assignments,” she nervously started. “I put in a lot of time and effort into doing them, but the grade…”

The professor shuffled through some papers, then extracted three. Ellen could see a ‘15’ on the first page. “Yes. The effort was good.”

“But?” There was always a ‘but.’

He _clack_ ed the papers on the table to straighten them, then looked Ellen in the eye. “Ms. Chua, I can tell you tried, but nobody recognizes you for trying.”

Ellen blinked. “I’m sorry?”

Amurao waved a hand at the paper. “Take assignment one. All you did was summarize the material. You were supposed to _analyze_ it.”

“I don’t—” She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “I don’t understand.”

“This might’ve worked in Introduction to Business. But you’re not a freshman anymore. This is a 300 level course. You need to critically think about the material, synthesize. Draw conclusions.”

But she thought she had. “Professor, I—”

“As for the third assignment,” he interrupted, “your conclusions are just flat out wrong, though you do a better job at the analysis.” He glanced at Ellen. “I can go through the comments, if you wish.”

Maybe that would help her understand. “Yes,” she said quietly.

“So, the first thing you do is quote the Miranda article about the flow of capital in global markets—the cross-sectional study?—but you confuse it with Hoffman’s hypothesis…”

Just like that, he went down the paper, reciting an endless litany of her failings. Near the end, all she could hear was the thudding of her heartbeat, the professor’s mouth forming words that she couldn’t really feel over how ashamed she was, how her face burned from all the errors she made that she had never even known until the professor pointed them out. She felt so small, so useless.

He was looking at her expectantly. Ellen looked at the paper. Oh. They were at the end. She blinked away tears. “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that last bit.”

The professor removed his reading glasses and set them to the side, then steepled his hands. “EGB is a rigorous course. I usually tell my students they need to be able to devote ten hours a week to it. You might have to spend more hours on the reading, really dig into what the authors are arguing for.”

“I already spend so much time,” Ellen mumbled. “I take twenty credits…”

“Perhaps you could drop the course then,” he said kindly. “Take it next semester, or next year.”

“I have to take it right now—”

“Some students are able to cope with a twenty credit workload _and_ EGB. I’m afraid there’s no gentler way to say it, but I don’t think you’re one of them.” Professor Amurao looked sincere and that made it worse. He stood up and lead Ellen to the door. “I hope you make the right decision.”

Ellen couldn’t help the tears that welled up as she stuttered, “I—I _need_ to, or I can’t—” She made it to Cornell, how could he say she _wasn’t smart_ , she’d done perfectly fine last year—when Mother found out she would tell her she had to drop the _art_ classes, not EGB, she would still have to deal with Professor Amurao—she could do it, but he didn’t believe… she was already putting in so many hours into just this course, she physically couldn’t do anything more, she had to do it but she couldn’t do it but she _needed_ to do it—

 

Ellen didn’t know when it had happened, but she was back in her studio apartment. She looked up from the mass of metal parts on the desk, covering the gutted remains of her cell phone. What had she been doing? She didn’t know. But she knew what the parts _could_ do. Ellen rubbed at her face, wiping away long-dried tears.

Maybe… maybe she could do something with this.

* * *

**_Postscript_ **

> **JANE HINTERSON** : So, you knew Bakuda before the Cornell incident?
> 
> **JINZLER YOUNGS** : I did. And she wasn’t Bakuda to me. Not ever. Her name is… _was_... Ellen. Ellen Chua. She was my friend. I like to think I still was hers. She studied business and art. I think she liked art a lot more than business.
> 
> **JANE** : What was it like, working with her?
> 
> **JINZLER** : She was pretty responsible. You know how they say group projects are more like one-person-does-it-all projects?
> 
> **JANE** : Of course. [LAUGHS] I went to uni too.
> 
> **JINZLER** : Yeah, she was the exception to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Remember, 20 credits means you need to dedicate at least 2-3 hours per course. Depending on how many courses you take, this can cut into your off-time and your personal life. This makes it difficult to turn 'off' after classes, and can sometimes cause a stress buildup. In the case of advanced business courses, it can mean that you spend multiple hours after your hours of class trying to complete assignments. This can lead to unfortunate consequences, and I do not recommend it.
> 
> Many thanks to the folks at PCT—Harbin, Gaia, Forge, Nihilistic Janitor and so on for helping me with ideas ~~and sometimes handing me entire portions of this story~~. Thanks Lyova (Fact Slash!), Kyakan (Citessa!), ProfHoyden and other fact-checkers on Cauldron for helping me figure out what’s canon. The better to subvert it to my own ends. Neersighted, NiJan and a couple others looked over BAP for flow.


	2. Chapter Two

“I’m doing fine, Mother,” Ellen said, trying not to scowl. She took a long drink from her mug of coffee.

“Are you sure? You sound like you don’t have a lot of energy. You need to keep your body in good condition for studying.” Her mother’s voice rang so tinnily from Ellen’s now-reassembled Nokia. Ellen scowled at the speaker.

“I said I’m fine, Mother.”

“Ellen—”

“Mother. I need to study,” she lied.

There was a brief pause. “Okay, Ellen. I love you.”

“Me too.”

Ellen had fixed her phone, if only because it was easier than having to deal with Mother fretting about Ellen not picking up. Hell, the actual work was easy. It came to Ellen like she had been a mechanic all her life. She simply knew how things worked together, how electricity flowed from source to sink, how you could make something incredibly unstable from household materials like bleach, pulpy orange juice and rice vinegar. It was honestly a little scary. The world had never felt so fragile before. She carefully picked up the newest thing she’d made. She was running on maybe four hours of sleep a day—bed at four, up at eight for class—so it didn’t hurt to be extra careful.

Her classes blurred together. EGB ended mere minutes after it started, and she caught herself falling asleep in Medieval Art once. She was so sure Professor Amurao was perfectly aware that she was flagging. It might have been a trick of the light, but when she’d locked eyes with him a couple times, he’d shaken his head minutely. It made her feel… feelings. Emotions that actually managed to pierce the haze of drowsiness that she spent her morning hours in. A little burn of embarrassment, a shock of anger, and a teaspoon of annoyance. But not for too long, because sleep deprivation made it hard to feel things for too long.

She skipped _The Financial System_ once. Or twice. Instead, she went to the vending machine in the electrical engineering building, buying useful things like little microprocessors, resistors, capacitors and LEDs. Makeup vials were an acceptable replacement for reaction chambers, and she got a remote controller from second-hand toys she bought at a garage sale. She aggressively skimmed her readings. It was a lot easier to make things than it was to really think deeply about answers for some stupid question like _‘Provide a reasoned argument for why a recession connected with a financial crisis would be more severe than one without one’_.

“You look like shit,” Jinzler commented.

Ellen rubbed her eyes, then kept rubbing them. They were so dry and she hadn’t even noticed and the bright sun outside the business building didn’t really help at all. “Sorry.”

“For?”

“I dunno.”

“Are you sleeping? Like, more than a couple hours a night.”

Ellen almost glared at Jinzler, though she soon closed her tired eyes. “Yeah?”

“Just asking. Like I said, you don’t look very well.” Maybe she was imagining it, but Jinzler was looking at her. She cracked open an eye. She wasn’t.

“Right.”

Jinzler rolled her shoulders. “I haven’t seen you in class much, either.”

“I’ve been in class.” Napping, more often than not. “I sat in the back row the last week or so.”

“Makes sense.” Jinzler took one last pull from her cigarette and snuffed it out on the ashtray/trash can combinations whose chief habitat seemed to be just outside of no smoking areas. She looked over Ellen. “Take better care of yourself, okay?”

“I am. Four hours is enough.” Jinzler raised a brow. Ellen suddenly found the collar of Jinzler’s button-up shirt extremely interesting. “Ugh, okay, I’ll sleep more.”

“Good.” Jinzler made to pat Ellen on the head, then looked at her hand and stopped. Ellen had told her that she didn’t like cigarette smell on herself. “Look, I gotta head off to FoF. Dinner later?”

Ellen hesitated. “Okay. Maybe. Text me?”

“Sure, bye.”

Ellen tinkered a lot. Yes, that was the word. Tinker. She was a Tinker. When she slept, ideas tormented her in her dreams. When she was awake, everything that wasn’t tinkering felt like a waste of time. She made things. Bombs, she knew, but she didn’t know what exactly they _did_. The little capsule with a shell made from a gacha she found on the floor had something to do with flameless explosions, and the Sprite can one did something to biology, but that was all. She’d never figure out the specifics until she tried—and she didn’t _want_ to try. Not yet, she wasn’t ready yet. Not even if she was really, really curious.

Entirely theoretically, triggering bombs was an interesting problem. She could’ve gone with a typical mechanism, but she could do better. Materials were obviously limited, but she managed to rig together a simple bomb selector/detonator from the toy remote car. It worked, at least on the really weak bombs she had made to test (they blew air). Though she liked what she made, she sometimes wished she had somebody to show it off to. It was like when she had been seven years old and had made a cool spaceship out of legos but her parents had barely acknowledged her when she showed it to them. That was already ten years ago.

She reluctantly put down her detonator, and tried to work on her homework. God, she didn’t have time, the problems were so time-consuming. She couldn’t finish it on her own. Though if she texted Jinzler…

Ellen hesitated. So far, she’d always done her homework on her own, out of some pride. She glanced at the half-finished something-nonlethal bomb nestled in the remains of a cheap red college orientation bottle. Pride wouldn’t get her anything.

She sent Jinzler a text.

She had to stop tinkering, for midterms. It was under duress, she told herself. She drowned in things to read. She slept even less than she did before. Two to four hours maximum.

She felt strangely calm as she waited for the midterm for EGB to start. The papers were distributed, time was called, and then without any sense of time passing the exam was over, and the proctors were collecting papers. She was too dead from the hours she hadn’t slept to feel much, but there was a tickly sense of dread within her chest. So many problems had felt like giant Rubric’s cubes—enigmas she couldn’t even begin to solve. She’d written down whatever sounded plausible. The ones she did solve, she found herself second-guessing. Did she actually know the answer, or did she only think she knew the answer, when she’d actually fallen into some trap that could’ve been avoided with more study time? The chatter of her classmates was little more than a dull roar in her ears as she packed up and left. She thought she heard someone call her name, but she didn’t look back. There was too much to do.

Ellen got an email the next week. Another one-line email from Amurao—he sure liked those. Title, midterm performance. Body, “Come to my office hours at your soonest convenience. M. Amurao.”

The door to his office was open, but he wasn’t inside. Ellen wasn’t sure whether she should wait outside. She entered and sat down in the chair closer to the door.

“Hello, Ms. Chua,” Amurao said smoothly. Ellen jerked. Had she zoned out, fallen asleep? The professor was at the door. “I hope I didn’t make you wait too long. I see you’ve already made yourself comfortable.” Before Ellen could decide whether she should apologize or stand up or whatever, the professor continued speaking. “I called you here about the midterms.”

Ellen wet her lips. Was she expected to say something? The little succulent plant on the professor’s desk caught her eye. It reminded her of the numbing bomb she’d made out of mint and aloe. She needed something less lethal if she wanted to be a cape.

She startled when Amurao clapped a thick, plastic file onto the table. He took out Ellen’s midterm. There was a lot of red. “Your performance on the midterm was… far from what was expected of my students, to say the least.”

“Right,” Ellen muttered. “I’m sorry.” Maybe some sleep powder? Chloroform was exaggerated in movies, but she could probably tinker up something that worked just as well.

“Don’t be,” Amurao said. “I did say you weren’t capable of finishing this class.”

It took a moment for the words to register. “Excuse me?” Heat rose in her cheeks.

“You’re not capable of this course, Ms Chua,” Amurao said, matter-of-factly. Almost kindly—but to Ellen, it felt like he was just pitying her. He couldn’t know that. Maybe she hadn’t kept up a little for homework, and didn’t study as much as she could for midterms. That didn’t mean she was incapable.

“I can do it,” she said, trying to look him in the eye instead of glare. Trying not to think of the things she could’ve done with this time, the things she could make with just the materials in this room. Just the computer alone, though she didn’t have enough liquid—No. She needed to focus.

“You can’t. I’ve read your midterm, I’ve personally looked at some of your assignments. Your answers were uninspired. Worse than the first three. I’m not even sure—” Amurao sighed, and slid a piece of paper across the table, what looked like Cornell paperwork. “Here.”

Petition to drop course with due cause. At the very bottom, two signature fields, one of which was already signed with precise black ink. _M. Amurao_. She glanced up at the professor, incredulous. His expression was calm. Maybe even satisfied.

“You won’t get a ‘W’ if you drop EGB with my permission,” he said. “I suggest you do it. Perhaps even reconsider whether you want to major in business at all. I am not sure it’s right for you. Remember, you’re only a sophomore, you still have choices.”

“Fu—” Ellen clenched her fists on her jeans. She drew in a shuddering breath as Amurao raised an eyebrow. “No. Professor.”

“Is that so,” he said cooly. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear what you were about to say.”

It made her so mad, when he prattled along like that, pretending to be nice and civil. He didn’t understand. He didn’t want to understand. He didn’t even try, didn’t have to try. That’s why he taught. You didn’t have to listen if you were the teacher. Students were there to learn, even if the teacher was _wrong_. Ellen gritted her teeth, trying not to say anything _stupid_. It was a losing fight. It was so tempting to let it all out.

“Ms Chua. This is your only chance to withdraw without a ‘W’ on your transcript. When—yes, when, not if you fail your final, you’ll have a D or F that you can’t get rid of. Do you really want that?”

That was it. Ellen abruptly stood up, swiped the form from the table and stalked out of the room.

“Don’t mess up twice,” Amurao called after her.

When she was outside the building, she screamed. Ripped the paper, tore it to shreds. Threw it into a garbage bin. Don’t mess up twice, he’d said. Well, Amurao was an idiot who couldn’t _do_ anything. What did he know?

Ellen walked as quickly as she could without running, back to her apartment. She was done being judged by Amurao. And she knew what she could do to fix that.

* * *

_Postscript_  
[The following is a transcript of a personal recording]

>   
>  **JANE HINTERSON:** You were targeted by Bakuda.  
>  **DR. MAXWELL AMURAO** : Yes. I lost my hearing for three months. Nothing permanent, though. I am told she ranted about my… professional qualifications.  
>  **JANE** : Why do you think she did what she did?  
>  **DR. AMURAO** : I hypothesize that Ms. Chua was a child, even if she was externally an adult. The Cornell incident was a temper tantrum of sorts—she was under pressure, couldn’t make the cut, so she lashed out. She wanted someone or something to blame. Powers just enabled her.  
>  **JANE** : Do you think the university had any part to play in it?  
>  **DR. AMURAO** : [SCOFFS] If we all blame our environment for our problems, nobody would be responsible for anything. The university provided her multiple outs. She chose her own path, and chose poorly.  
>  **JANE** : So you deny allegations that you pressured her to withdraw from your class?  
>  **DR. AMURAO** : I have never passed a student I did not think was properly equipped to engage in economic analysis. Ms. Chua was no exception. I merely hoped to ease the impact on her academics, let her know that one failure didn’t mean the end of the world. I was fully supportive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So I just realized you can cut out a couple hours of sleep without any real deficit in terms of actual academic performance and I have to say there hasn't been any real consequence for cutting out a couple hours of sleep without any real deficit in terms of actual academic performance. I think it's a good idea if you're falling behind on your classes and you should try to find some good coffee and maybe some five hour energy drinks but after that you should be good. There’s a minor problem where my heart rate goes way up and I feel really anxious/nervous but that’s probably okay if I can channel that nervous energy to studying. All in all, I've been able to finish all of my course load without any problems so I can wholly say that this is definitely a good idea and I highly recommend it. And I think I might even be able to cut it down to four hours of sleep in a pinch. If I did that I could fit in. Everyone else at my school does it, I probably need to do it too.
> 
> Thank you to Harbin and Gaia for ideas. Thanks Lyova, Kyakan and other fact-checkers on Cauldron for helping me figure out what’s canon.


	3. Chapter Three

“Away from the windows. Middle of the room. Yes, you. Don’t try anything _stupid_ , or you’ll get blown up. Don’t wanna get blown up? Don’t try and pull anything. It’s not hard, people.” The words hissed and crackled, stripped of any tones or affect, sounding more like bad text-to-speech than Ellen’s own voice. She was standing at the top of the stairs in the lecture hall. It was a great view.

It was harder than she had thought, ordering around people whose names and faces she knew. Threatening them. Katie, texting, head down. Scott, glaring at her. Two dozen others, probably juniors or something. The bomb in her hand was more for show than it was lethal—she didn’t have any plans of killing herself—but it helped. People cowered. Amurao was trying to keep his composure, but she could see how his knuckles whitened from gripping the podium too hard. Hell, he wasn’t even at the podium cause he _wanted_ to, but rather because a splatter of something a lot like containment foam kept him stuck to the floor. She didn’t feel as bad after that.

“Well, what do you want to achieve?” Amurao said, sounding almost—almost!—like he was in class, answering a question with another goddamn question. She savored the difference. “You don’t—”

“Shut up. I didn’t ask for your input, dipshit.” He fell silent. Ellen looked around. It was harder to see through the gas mask, especially with the modifications she’d made to the glass over her eyes. Worse peripheral vision. It should’ve felt claustrophobic, but it was so… freeing. She pressed a button on her detonator. The building shook with a series of thumps. She then took a deep breath—all eyes were on her!—which the voice changer interpreted as a rattle. “It’s not just this room. Whole building’s rigged. I blocked off the doors. The windows will explode if you try to jump out them. Repeatedly. Don’t try. Honestly, it was pretty hard getting them to do that. Just one of the bombs I have could bring the whole building down on us.” She tapped her grenade belt. “I have a lot of bombs here and I’m not entirely sure which are which. Don’t try anything funny, and we can all be civil. Otherwise we can figure out what my creations do. Together. Group project? Yeah, full credit to me. Fucking freeloaders.” She laughed nervously. A rattle, like wading through a particularly crisp pile of leaves. She should stop rambling.

“You’re bluffing,” Amurao said, voice shaking just a little.

Ellen popped a grenade off her belt. Sound bomb. “Yeah?” The man’s gaze was unsettlingly even, like he was daring her to do it. It pissed her off. So she did it. The dense little orb, once a plastic easter egg, _clacked_ into the podium and popped open. Amurao clapped his ears to his hands, but all Ellen heard was a whisper, a slight breeze. So it wasn’t just a sound bomb, it was a _directed_ sound bomb. She loved it. Not quite as flashy as her other bombs, but she could see its use.

“Cape,” some people whispered.

“What in the—” Amurao stopped, expression weird. “Hmm. Hmm?”

She ignored him, pulling out a folding chair to sit on. She addressed the rest of the room. “Go ahead, call the police. Let them know. I won’t stop you. _They_ can’t stop me.” Ellen hefted the trigger in her hand as she watched Katie dial 913, delete, 11, delete, drop phone. Repeat. The girl finally typed 911 then glanced at Ellen, as if asking permission. She continued. “Tell them if they try to send SWAT in, the heroes in, we’re all going to die. Shoot me, deadman’s switch goes off, school goes boom. It’s tinker tech. You can’t disable it.”

Katie started talking into her phone, low and desperate. Some cape is holding Cornell hostage help us please, the words spilled from her mouth, jumbling over each other. Ellen watched impassively, drumming her fingers against her thigh. She was sure the bombs and the mines would discourage the heroes from coming in—and anyways, Toronto and New York City were a couple hours away—what if Legend showed up, did she _have_ anything she could do to—a bomb that threw up a crystalline mist, scattering the lasers? _Could_ they be scattered? Anyways she was probably not important enough for that there were dozens of worse people than her, and she wasn’t even _bad_ she didn’t hurt anyone yet it was Amurao’s fault—

“Ellen?”

She looked without thinking. Jinzler, half-crouched in front of one of the half dozen chair-rows built into the lecture hall, confusion turning into surprise. She had forgotten about her. Ellen immediately turned away, but it was too late. Now she wasn’t anonymous. She couldn’t go back, anymore. It was an electric thrill, the feeling of looking down from the observatory deck of the Sears Building to see nothing beneath you but a lethal drop, glass in the way or not.

“Ellen, is that you?”

“No. Fuck off.” Ellen fumbled for a bomb, something not lethal, something that wouldn’t hurt. Permanently, at least. Sticky web, paralysis, another sound trap...

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” Ellen froze. Jinzler’s long, wavy hair was tied back. She never tied it back, even if smoke smell from her cigarettes always got into her hair. Said she hated the feeling. Her hands were up in a placating gesture. She took a cautious step closer. “Ellen. Or not. I don’t know. Just… Fuck. _Why_ are you doing this?” Jinzler spread her hands a little. “Nobody here’s done anything to you. I think.”

“Nobody’s done anything?” Ellen repeated, voice rising. “You know perfectly well what Amurao does! He’s full of shit, just power tripping, pretending to be smarter than everyone else when really he’s just a, a goddamn _bully_ , with his ‘high standards’ and ‘rigorous education’, looking down on anyone who doesn’t fit—you’ve seen how he treats people who don’t measure up. How he looks at them. You’ve seen it!”

“Right,” Jinzler said. “He’s a bit of a shithead.”

“I worked my ass off,” she said, gesticulating with the detonator, her movements jerky. “Hours and hours every week for one fucking class and what he say? What does he _fucking_ say? Try harder!”

“You did your best,” Jinzler said. “Sometimes that just isn’t enough.”

“It _should_ be enough!” Ellen screamed. “It _has_ to be enough!”

She was too close for comfort, Ellen noticed, right before Jinzler threw herself at her. She was strong, she worked out, was taller than Ellen, she was being pinned—a bomb she needed a bomb—the detonator was being wrestled out of her hand other hand pinned too much time for grenade bomb lethal doesn’t matter need to _win_ press the button kick—

—all the air gone from her lungs—

—Jinzler went flying—

—breath returned and Ellen gasped, feeling like she had been underwater for too long, her mask translating that sound into a loud rattle. She panted, then slowly stood back up. Nobody moved, not even Jinzler, who was crumpled against the far wall. Ellen moved to wipe the tears from her eyes—she didn’t know whether they were of anger, desperation, or betrayal—but her finger bumped into the plastic of her gas mask. She let her hand drop. She wanted to ask if Jinzler was still alive. She wanted to take back what she’d done. She wanted nothing more than to run away from all of this.

“She needs a hospital,” some dipshit said. His face was vaguely familiar but she was running a blank on his name.

“Not happening,” Ellen spat, turning on him. She couldn’t go back. Not now.

“She definitely has a concussion, maybe broken ribs—”

“Hey. Look. Do I look like I care? I could do much worse. I have smartbombs, stuff that’ll ash all of you but leave me with a mild burn. I could bring the whole damn _building_ down on us. Be glad I didn’t do worse.”

The man glared a little but didn’t protest more.

The heroes arrived six hours later. So did a phone call for Ellen, routed through Katie’s cell phone. “T-t-they want to t-talk to you the battery’s a little low I’m sorry I used—”

“Shut up. Slide it to me.” She could have her give her the phone directly, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Katie wasn’t really the type to be a hero—but Jinzler hadn’t been, either.

“It’ll get scratched,” Katie whispered, but she put the phone on the linoleum and shoved it towards Ellen.

“Hello, Miss…?” The woman’s voice was perfectly calm, smooth. Not demanding like a police or the PRT, not full of herself like a hero.

“Who are you?” Ellen snapped, or tried to snap, but it came out softer than she planned.

“My name is Olivia Carasa. I’m with the PRT, but I’m not from the PRT. I want to talk to you, and check on the people with you.”

“This is a trap,” Ellen said. “You’re trying to distract me.”

“I promise this is not.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“The PRT isn’t going to force its way in. You said you wouldn’t use any of your bombs if nobody tries to come in, right?”

“Yes.”

“The PRT doesn’t want anyone to be hurt. I don’t either. I hope you don’t, too.” A pause. “How are you holding up?”

Ellen glared at the phone. “What do you care?”

“I would like if everyone made it through this. This includes you.”

And so it went on. Olivia was eerily patient with her, deflecting her outbursts, repeatedly stating that she wanted a peaceful ending. Like if she said it enough times, it would actually happen. She asked if Ellen wanted to be called anything other than ‘Fireworks’, the PRT name. (No.) She asked if Ellen was a parahuman, but didn’t ask for any specifics. Told her that she had a daughter Ellen’s age.

“Is there anyone injured there? Any children, elderly?” Her voice was so calming to listen to, but... but she couldn’t shake the feel that it was calculated. So she could be moved, directed. Diverted.

“I don’t know who else is in the building. But there’s one injured, here. She tried to jump me. I had to hurt her.”

“I see. That’s okay. Do you know if she has any medical conditions?”

“No, I—” Ellen reflexively ran her fingers down her bandolier of explosives, even though she already knew exactly which bombs she had where. “No. She doesn’t. She’s—she’ll be fine. Just a concussion. Some bruised ribs.”

A murmur rose up, but nobody was brave enough to actually speak up.

Ellen pointed at them with her detonator. “Shut it.”

“If you could send her out, we could take care of her. It’ll look better for you, and she could get the help she needs.”

“No.” She couldn’t send _anyone_ out. Too risky. Who knew what kind of movers or shakers they had?

“Alright. That’s okay, but tell me if you change your mind.”

Everyone wanted something from her. Her mother wanted a daughter with straight As and an Ivy League degree. Amurao wanted her to fuck off. Olivia wanted her to send people out. “It’s not happening.”

“Okay,” Olivia said. “Can you promise you’ll let her go if she gets worse?”

Ellen hesitated. “Maybe.”

“Okay.”

She tinkered a little. No matter how hard she thought, she couldn’t figure out a way to get out of this situation. Bombs that threw up a smoke screen would only help so much—too many people, too many capes. She didn’t know how to fight capes. But she had made it this far. She needed to pull through. She could pull through.

 

“The situation you’re in right now is good for you,” Olivia said, some hours later. “Nobody’s dead. You haven’t hurt anyone too badly, and you’re talking. That helps.”

“Why?”

“Because you matter. You’re someone too. You wouldn’t be someone if you refused to talk, you’d be just an objective.”

Ellen heard someone else through the phone, but the quality wasn’t good enough to let her make up the words. Olivia said something in response, covering the mic so she couldn’t hear anything. “It makes sense,” Ellen admitted. “I don’t think you care, though. This is just your job. You don’t even know who I am.”

“My job is to help you, and everyone with you, come away from this in the best possible position. It helps a lot that you haven’t killed anyone, or tortured anyone. Are you with an organization or is it just you?”

“What would happen if I let Jin—the injured girl go?” She ignored the way her… hostages stirred.

“It would help.”

“Tell the PRT that if they try to take advantage of this to try and get in, I _will_ blow the school sky-high.”

“Crystal clear.”

Jinzler was conscious by now. Even from across the room she looked out of it. “You,” Ellen shouted, pointing at Jinzler. “Catch.” She threw a tiny token she’d just made at her. Jinzler flinched but caught it. “You know the first floor hall with the couches? Take that, break open the window, and jump out. If you hesitate, you’ll get blown up. If you try to come back in, if the heroes try to use it, they’ll all die. Got it?”

Jinzler’s look was inscrutable, dark brown eyes that Ellen had known so well closed off like a curtain. She nodded, then winced. She must have a bad concussion.

“Go.” She hoped she hadn’t made a mistake.

  
 

“Jinzler Youngs made it to us safely,” Olivia said. “She’s being taken to the hospital right now.”

“Obviously.”

“Is there anything you want? Like I said before, if you make some concessions, we can make some concessions.”

“Tell the PRT to go away.” That would make things easier.

“I wish I could convince them to do that,” Olivia said. Ellen could hear the frown in her voice. More and more, It felt like an act. “I don’t have any authority over the PRT, though, and as long as you have hostages they wouldn’t want to stand down. How about...” Ellen listened to Olivia for a few moments longer, the droning, calming voice making her want to throw the phone at Katie, hit her square in the face. This woman didn’t care about her. She just treated her as someone to be corralled, a problem to be solved.

Amurao was sprawled on the stage floor, now, no longer willing or able to stay standing. For all his conviction and poise, when things came to a head he’d given up remaining dignified, instead lying down as comfortably as he could when part of his leg was glued to the floor. She wanted to giggle at that, to snicker at how just a little dab of containment foam-equivalent had brought him low.

Yes. Everyone just wanted to use her. Push her around like she didn’t matter. She dropped Katie’s phone on the ground. The battery popped out, cutting off Olivia’s voice. Good riddance. It was dark by now. She could probably make a run for it. If Olivia was to be trusted—and everything she’d said was suspect now—the fact that she stopped talking meant the heroes would attack soon. Well, she couldn’t win by just sitting here.

She herded the hostages to the front door of the building. Diversion. Solvent bomb to dissolve the solid block of _something_ one of her previous bombs had make, and as a happy side effect create a cloud of blinding smoke.

“Here’s what you’re going to do,” Ellen shouted. “When I throw this bomb, that block is going to melt. Then you are going to walk out. Easy, right? Even the most idiotic of you can manage to not fuck this up. On my mark? Three, two, one.”

She threw the bomb. Black smoke spewed out as the block melted. She ran the other way, found a stairwell, peeked through the glass. It was bright outside, the whole school lit by dozens of floodlights the PRT had brought, but as she had hoped they were concentrated on the main exits. Her pulse thudded in her head. Now or never. She took a moment to disable the fire alarm and shoved the door open and ran. She immediately couldn’t see. Not because of the light or anything. Her sense of sight just… went away. Cape.

She set off more smoke bombs. She heard a woman call out, “South exit, Fireworks!” Couldn’t see, couldn’t get her bearings. She ran, trying not to think of what would happen if she collided with something. It was as scary as she thought, her entire body tickling as if anticipating the sudden stop. She needed more bombs. A blind toss of a grenade to the side—she heard screams, that was good, nevermind the sick sensation she had in her stomach—her vision came back but she was in the smoke—

She went flying and hit the ground hard, breath wheezing out of her. She rolled onto her back and laid there for a bit.

“She hit one of my mines,” a boy shouted. “Near the big tree?”

“On it,” the woman from before said. Crap. Get up get up get _up_ , she threw another bomb behind her she didn’t remember what it did. More running.

She didn’t make it very far before she stepped onto _another_ goddamned ‘mine’ that threw her next to a couple PRT soldiers. They shouted, and someone sprayed containment foam on her. It was weirdly warm, smelled rubbery, and was so heavy on her. It was supposed to let you breathe, but it felt like breathing through a thick quilt. Suffocating. She thrashed, but the foam had give. She screamed, but that just made the foam slip into her mouth and make her gag. She struggled and she cried and she choked.

* * *

_Postscript_  
[The following is a transcript of a personal recording.]

> **JANE HINTERSON:** You said you were there when she held Cornell hostage. 
> 
> **JINZLER YOUNGS** : The room where it happened, yes. [CHUCKLES] Sorry. Yeah. I tried to stop her. 
> 
> **JANE** : That must have been scary to do. You’re brave.
> 
> **JINZLER** : I didn’t really think. I just hoped I could keep her from doing something she couldn’t undo. I think it would’ve worked. Except the part where it didn’t, I guess.
> 
> **JANE** : Were there any warning signs before the incident?
> 
> **JINZLER** : No. Not particularly. She spent most of her time studying, you know. So stressed, all the time, about her grades, though. She always overloaded to the max they allowed her. I wonder what she would’ve done if she hadn’t, you know. Become a cape. [LONG PAUSE] You know, I don’t think I ever asked what Ellen wanted to do in the future. It was always about the present. The next midterm, the next due date. She coped by pressuring herself further. I guess—I guess something had to give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Okay so the thing is it’s a lot harder to stay up all night instead of sleeping less, Google tells me it’s because when you sleep your brain resets your “am i tired” counter because your brain is dumb. So even if you sleep only a little like just 20 minutes you still feel a lot better, though the thing is you still are equally tired and bad at decision-making you just aren’t _aware_ of it. So like don’t go drive on 48 hours of staying up just cuz you took a 1hr nap and feel quote peachy unquote because you’re actually going to drive worse than a dude who just did a shot. Or two. That said once you’re awake for long enough you feel energized and strangely focused, and you can probably do some work right then even if it’s less than peak capacity. Remember the jitters that I mentioned I got from caffeine? I also jitter a little when I’m lacking sleep, and drinking coffee kinda just makes that worse tbh. Bleh. Still, better than missing classes and/or midterm(s). Remember, just make sure to only do caffeine when you really shouldn’t fall asleep, like just before your _Risk Management in Emerging Markets_ midterm. That way you’ll crash _after_ your midterm instead of _during_ it. Because crashing mid-midterm would be bad. In entirely unrelated news I took my midterm while running on around zero hours of sleep and boy was it a doozy, at least I didn’t _not_ take it, you know? Slept for twelve hours after that and woke up at 4am tho.
> 
> Thank you, Harbin and Gaia for making Bubbles Always Pop what it is, however meagre. Thank you Aliphant and Nonagon for capes.


	4. Chapter Four

The judge droned on.

“—accordingly, it is the judgement of the court that for the crime of terrorism, the defendant is sentenced to serve a term of imprisonment in the Department of Corrections of the State of New York for ten years. For the crime of hostage-taking with a parahuman ability, the defendant is sentenced to serve a term of imprisonment in the same of ten years, with reasonable precautions for her parahuman abilities. For the crime of parahuman battery—”

The slow, bored tone of the man’s voice almost put her to sleep. She was going to prison. What more was there to listen to?

The gavel rapped the block twice.

  
 

Ellen winced as the guard tied her wrists to the steel bars with plastic ties. It was her twice-daily cell sweep, to make sure she hadn’t built something. She didn’t get any bits of metal, and her meals were carefully bland as to not provide her with a source of acid. The prisoners in cells across from her saw her ‘special treatment’ every day. You get used to it, the scarred woman in the cell right across had told her, not unkindly. She would be moved to prison, soon, now that her sentence had been announced. Nine years and eleven months.

  
 

The road burned around her, but the tall man in front of her barely seemed to mind. Hell, he wasn’t even wearing a shirt. And had torn off the van doors with his bare hands. His eyes were fixed on Ellen—not a glare, because that would imply she mattered to him. An appraising look, perhaps. The plastic of the prison transport van’s interior looked deformed. She kept her eyes on the man, consciously breathing through her mouth, because the guards—

“You will come with me,” he said.

“Um,” Ellen said. “W-who the _hell_ are—” Her eyes drifted away from his steel mask. ”I’m not so sure—”

“You misunderstand. This is not a negotiation. You will walk out of here with me, or you will die. One way or another.” The van creaked as Lung put a foot onto the rear. “You have talent. I want it.”

Ellen didn’t reply. Sweat trickled down her face, radiant heat from the flames palpable even from here. Was he taller, now? Almost eight feet. Or were her senses failing her, the smoke clouding up her mind?

“Come. There is much to do.” He raised a hand towards Ellen, palm up. She wavered. She didn’t know who this man was.

But he could give her freedom. The government hadn’t done her jack shit.

“Quickly.”

She went, taking quick steps, steering clear of any fire as she left. A white van idled a short distance away. As soon as the steel-masked man stepped near it, the passenger door opened and a man with short hair jumped out and bowed deeply.

The masked man said something in Japanese, and the man obeyed instantly, getting right back into the car. Ellen thought of the burning road, and the smell of ash. She probably would’ve obeyed too. Especially if he liked to use his powers to torture. She shivered, and clambered into the back of the van after him. “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

“Brockton Bay.” The man did more than sit—he dominated the single forward facing seat row, leaving no question that it was his. Ellen perched herself on a side-seat attached to the wall. The rest of the chairs had been ripped out for storage. Heavy-duty dark plastic containers. It smelled like sweat and mold and something acidic she’d rather not put a name to. Brockton Bay, huh? She’d never been, herself, but it was rather notorious.

“Do you…” It was obvious, she realized too late, he might get angry from stupid questions but she was already speaking might as well finish—”You’re Lung.”

“Yes.” The man removed his mask—rugged, blocky features—and reclined his seat backwards. “I tire. We will speak later.”

She wished there had been a window to look out of. The small viewport in the front panel was too awkward to look out of from her spot, and she didn’t want to get too close to Lung. She’d heard stories, his iron grip on the—the Azn Bad Boys. What a shitty name. She was surprised he hadn’t spelled it _boiz_. She’d scoffed before, but having the man himself in front of him? He was taking a nap and she could still palpably feel his menace.

She heard distant sirens. She, Ellen Chua, ex-straight-A student at Cornell, had just broken out of prison… transport. She giggled a little, glanced at Lung again. She had just _broken out_. Well, technically, _been_ broken out, but the courts sure as hell wouldn’t care about that. She’d thought getting a zero on her assignments was one she couldn’t go back from, then it was when she’d started holding uni hostage, then it was the moment she’d hurt her fr—Jinzler, then the moment she’d gotten sentenced to ten years. Things just kept coming and she could barely keep afloat. It wasn’t funny at all, but she couldn’t help laughing.

The hours dragged by, every second feeling like exactly one second. An hour was a lot of seconds. Ellen had peeked inside some of the containers—they had boring things like pistols, mundane grenades, and knives. She’d taken a brief attempt at looking through the viewport—having a view of the backs of a couple heads and blue-tinted highway wasn’t worth the awkward pose. She _considered_ making something with the mundane grenades, like a cluster bomb that did illegal things to matter and would self-propagate a dozen times before it fizzled but she wasn’t sure she was allowed to break the tools here.

The van wasn’t so much larger than her cell, but it felt so much freer.

Lung snored.

* * *

She’d fallen asleep, because she jolted awake when the driver-side door slammed shut. Lung was already alert. It was dark outside. The air was more humid here. It smelled like recent rain. Crickets gently chirruped as Ellen followed Lung up the driveway. Suburbs, a two story house. The front door opened, and a pair of men behind it bowed sharply as Lung approached. He didn’t even cast them a glance as he passed. The men kept their position until she’d entered the house as well. Lung led her upstairs, casually taking two at a time with his longer stride.

Ellen had the feeling that Lung was going to talk to her, and that the outcome of this talk would decide how she would be treated, possibly for the rest of her life. She didn’t want to be someone who only took orders. That galled on her, somehow more than being incarcerated had. She wasn’t some _mook_ , like the men outside, waiting on the whims of a leader. She was smart, capable, a cape. Lung said he wanted her talents. She was an equal, and she had to show that by being tough.

“Do you speak Chinese, or Japanese?” Lung asked. He settled himself in an armchair next to a coffee table next to a couch, red fabric.

“My father was from Singapore, but he always used English with Mother.”

“That is a no.”

“Right.”

“Do you have a cape name?”

“The PRT called me Fireworks,” Ellen said, trying to sound nonchalant. She walked up to the couch, three seats wide. It hadn’t aged well, looking worn and uncomfortable, but it was clean enough. She sat.

Lung considered her. “‘Hanabi’ is too… soft.”

“Dunno what that means.”

He didn’t deign to reply, instead continuing to look at her with his intense, dark eyes barely visible in the dim light. She forced herself to return his gaze. Because she needed to. She couldn’t help but shiver, though. Did he see through her?

Two women walked in, providing a welcome excuse to break eye contact. They had on almost no clothing. She blinked, taken aback. They approached the coach, so she stood up, started pacing, making arcs in the confines of the room, feeling Lung’s eyes on her. The two women—they were prostitutes. Obviously. They looked like they didn’t want to be here, like they didn’t know what to do. Knocked out of a routine. She carefully smoothed her own expression, paving over her surprise—she wasn’t hiding behind a mask right now. Couldn’t afford to show weakness. Couldn’t afford to become like them.

“Perhaps ‘Bakuda’,” Lung said.

“Sure.” It was better than Fireworks. She’d conceded to a thing, so maybe she had to push back? Something inconsequential. “The ‘Azn Bad Boys’ is a shit name.”

Lung was expressive in much the same way a cliff face was expressive. The shadows cast on his face threw his features in harsh relief—his blocky cheekbones, his angular jaw. Had she overstepped?

“Just saying,” she added.

 

 

“You think like I do,” Lung said. “In terms of power and fear.”

It made a lot of sense. She’d already understood, on some level, that fear made you change how you act, hadn’t she? Amurao had wielded the first type of fear over her for so long, but she’d eventually tested him. And he’d broken. Granted, she could’ve done better—bomb his home, for example, instead of holding the entire school hostage, and the higher profile it came with, or turn the fear she’d inspired towards something productive. She sat down on the couch again, and watched as the two women edged away from her. They were afraid because they’d faced Lung’s retribution, and knew how to avoid it. They were afraid of _her_ because she was an unknown. She snorted, very softly. She almost couldn’t believe she was here, getting lectured by a pimp (some degrees removed) and a gang boss on how the world worked, or that it _made sense_. And she didn’t want to end up on the bottom, not ever again.

“Alright. You got me.”

 

 

Mostly, she made bombs. She had a small lab set up in a safehouse, some people to gopher for her. Actual clothes, instead of sweatpants and generic T-shirts. She felt almost human again.

“I can’t make fancy shit for Oni Lee,” she told Lung. He considered.

“Why not?”

“Here’s the thing. _I_ know what this does. You and Oni Lee? Don’t. It’ll be like handing a smart phone to my grandmother. She wouldn’t know how to fix it when the screen goes black, but I’d know I just need to turn it back on.” She tossed and caught the bomb in her hands. She was reasonably sure it was the sound bomb she’d used on Amurao, but she wouldn’t know until she tried.

“Find a way to make it work,” Lung said. It wasn’t a suggestion.

“It’d be unsafer, but I guess I could make it like a mundane grenade. Pull trigger, it goes off after a bit. Contact would be terrible, you’d blow up like a box of matches. Can’t make it too big, either.” An idea, something like reverse napalm. Fire that slid off of people. She jotted it down in her ideas pad.

Lung grunted. “And for the Undersiders?”

Ellen grinned. “Well, I had just the idea for—what did you say his name was?” Her hands almost unconsciously fidgeted with the bomb she was holding, taking it apart enough to modify. “Grue, that’s the name. See...”

Lung’s demands were challenging, but she solved them again and again. It helped that he knew exactly what he wanted, and had the information and resources to help. She was having a pretty good feeling about this.

* * *

Ellen’s primary workbench was littered with subcomponents, all shaping up towards a beautiful whole. Four other, completed ones sat nestled in a foam-lined case to the side. She reached for a heavy capacitor, but her hands successfully explored the entire box without encountering any.

“Hey.” She pointed at one of the men. What was his name? “Uhhh. Qiang?”

He scowled at her. “What?”

“I need some…” She trailed off. “Did you just glare at me?”

“No,” he said, chin up. “Didn’t.”

“You just did.”

“It’s the way my eyes look.”

Ellen drew in a shaky breath. This was important to deal with, something she _needed_ to deal with. If she let them have one victory, no matter how small, they’d keep prodding, testing. Questioning. She had to nip it in the bud. “You’re fucking with me.”

“Ain’t fucking nobody, Ms. Bakuda,” he said, still looking challenging. “But if I was, what were you gonna do about it?”

She didn’t noticed she’d walked right up to him, around the workbench, until another man, tall and lanky and named Kevin, interposed himself between the two of them. “Hey, dude, calm down.”

“No, I can’t stand her just waltzing in and taking over—”

“She’s got Lung—”

“Without Lung she’d be nothing—”

“I’m a fucking cape, bitch,” Ellen yelled.

Qiang shoved Kevin aside, got up in Ellen’s face. He towered over her, almost pressing her against the workbench. “Why, what are you going to do to me? Run to daddy?” She froze up. “You don’t have the guts to do anything yourself.”

Ellen felt a rushing feeling in her head. Her hands touched the smooth metal of the bombs. She had to make it decisive. “Hey, you done speaking, dipshit?”

“No, I—”

She brought her hand around and threw a bomb into his face. It went off on contact. She shoved herself over the workbench for distance and hit her shoulder hard on the ground when she fell off the other side. Qiang screamed and screamed. She could smell the sharp, anti-septic smell of ozone, the stench of cooking flesh. She struggled to her feet, hand over her shoulder. “Done speaking now?” she spat.

Qiang was on the floor spasming, a golden, sparking net wrapped around his head and face. It was technically non-lethal, but he would scar. Ellen felt bile rise, and turned away, holding it down. She had to do it. Why’d he have to challenge her, why didn’t he stick to the uncertain fear?

“Ms. Bakuda,” Kevin said, cautiously.

“It’ll stop soon,” she told him, clipping her syllables short. “Take him to a doctor or something. He won’t die.”

“Thank you,” he said, bowing hastily. The sparks died down as he spoke.

“I still need more of these,” Ellen said, raising her chin at the empty box of capacitors. She couldn’t help but feeling like she was intruding on something. What, she wasn’t so sure of. Was that look in his eyes the second kind of fear? “Not now, but by today.”

“Yes, Ms. Bakuda,” Kevin said. “C’mon, Qiang, let’s go.”

She watched the two men leave her workshop, one supporting the other. She couldn’t stop shuddering. Her heart pounded. It had been so close. She’d hurt someone badly. But if she hadn’t, he would’ve kept testing her, others would keep testing her. Lung would understand. She had to do it, to keep her underlings in line.

She picked up the parts that she’d scattered all across the floor, ran her thumb over a surprisingly rugged series of circuits set into the inside of a shell. There was work to do.

* * *

“I heard you attacked one of the ABB,” Lung said, almost conversationally, during one of his workshop visits.

Bakuda didn’t do anything like freeze, drop whatever she was holding, or look guilty. She met his eyes. “No. I punished him.” A slight tremor crept into the edges of her words.

Lung nodded slightly, almost to himself. He moved on. “The Grue bomb was effective. It dispersed some of the darkness, but too late. Perhaps a shorter fuse.” Was it approval? It had to be approval. She’d achieved something. This was how the world worked.

And it felt _good_.

* * *

_Postscript_

[The following is an excerpt from a document, sourced from the pre-GM organization known as the PRT]

>   
>  (Page 1)  
>  PRT INTERNAL DOCUMENT — AUTHORIZED EYES ONLY
> 
> POST-MORTEM: CASE V011-33029C
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Unauthorized acquisition, possession, reproduction, or distribution of this document, or communication of its contents, is punishable by law and internal regulation._
> 
> (Page 2)  
>  **Summary:**  
>  Recruitment of new heroes, regardless of origin, is an important mission of the PRT. The law-mandated real name protection of parahuman criminal cases, as well as the opaque nature of correctional facilities allows for multiple liberties in recruiting capes with a criminal record—e.g. a transfer from a maximum security facility to another, non-existent maximum security facility is unlikely to be discovered. The villain involved in Case V011-33029B (henceforth, _the subject_ ) was identified as a potential target for a recruitment offer, based on one or more factors including but not limited to background, education, Thinker precognitions, personality, and criminal record. However, when the subject was being transported to the correction facility they would serve their sentence in, before the offer could be made, a villainous parahuman (V001-29883A:BM) intercepted the transport vehicle. Later, the subject was discovered operating as a member of the organized gang V001-29883 lead. We will discuss the series of accidents that contributed to this event, as well as identify areas of improvement to reduce the likelihood of a similar event in the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I had to drop all my overloaded classes. Just two, but it still hurt. For the first time this semester I actually slept more than five hours in a row. It was kinda amazing, I guess. This is the first time I had to drop, the first time I got Ws (for Withdraw) on my transcript. The advisor said it wasn’t a big deal, Ws don’t lower my GPA. And that since I had been overloading so much I wouldn’t have any problems going forward, either. It still felt like a big deal. I don’t know. It’s a lot to process.
> 
> Also, someone held the Business building hostage last week. Bombs and stuff. One of my friends was there but she thankfully wasn’t hurt, unlike that one girl who had like a concussion and broke half the major bones in her body. So glad I skipped class. Capes are fucking crazy yo.
> 
>  
> 
> I have many people to thank: Harb, NiJan and Gaia helped me ensure BAP finishes at all. Y’all are writer’s block-busters and idea generators. Lyova, Kyakan and other Cauldron members helped with fact-checking in spite of my relentless pings. Lyova and Moggle’s comments were very helpful.


	5. Chapter Five

Bakuda looked up from her workbench, snapping out of her fugue. “Say that again?”

“I brought dinner for you, Ms. Bakuda?” What was his name? The friend of that guy she’d shocked two weeks ago. Didn’t really matter, though. He couldn’t hold her gaze, eyes flickering towards her then back towards the floor, shoulders tense.

“Oh. Put it here.” She set one of the bomb containers on the floor. The man put the plate down and backed off, bowing.

The Empire didn’t consider fighting Lung worth invading the docks. So she mostly stockpiled bombs in preparation for when the Empire _would_ start testing him, as well as brainstorming countermeasures for the Undersiders—good at what they did, but not a serious threat. She’d had some time to spare for personal projects between her tasks, though, and hadn’t wasted it.

For instance, the man who’d just backed off, as well as everyone else in her workshop building were outfitted with bracelets strung with four bombs the size of ball-bearings. She’d found out she could make things that activated _every_ pain receptor, whose effects could be projected over an area… or scoped to whoever was touching the bomb. It worked perfectly—no risk of them dying. Along with her newer detonation interface, the rings she could touch together, she could set them off at any time without a warning. The physical reminder of the cool spheres against her underlings’ skin and the two or three demonstrations she’d been forced to conduct served as effective reminders of what she could do. Or rather, what they couldn’t do, that she could.

Fear.

She slept like the dead, but it wasn’t enough. She had a pounding headache by two in the afternoon. She couldn’t tinker like this. Maybe she needed to take a break. Even if she didn’t tinker, though, she still couldn’t relax. She couldn’t stop feeling like she was failing, and failing Lung by not working. Like she was being unproductive. Her thoughts raced, flitting from idea to idea. Would drinking help?

She walked down the street. One of the liquor stores that cooperated with the gang would probably sell her something, age limit or not. She picked one and went in.

“Hey, I need…” She trailed off. They’d set up a table in a corner near the entrance, a battered-looking, carved one made of actual wood, low and stout. A black and white picture of some teenager sat in a frame atop a dry bed of flowers, behind a small stack of dry food on an altar stand. But that wasn’t what had caught her attention. It was the sticks of incense in rice, smoldering gently, trailing a thin line of smoke.

She stared, annoyed. It smelled strong, a low scent that permeated the entire room and filled up her awareness, with that particular smokey tinge that reminded her of cigarettes.

Ellen focused on that dim burning ring, then reached out and turned both of the sticks upside down into the wet rice, putting them out.

“I’m sorry, who are—” The shop owner, a lady who looked Korean and like she’d recently cried, with her puffy eyes, cut herself off when she saw the red-green bracelet around Ellen’s wrist. Her expression shifted to that same one she’d seen so many times on her underlings. “What do you want? I don’t—please don’t—”

“Just give me…” She ran her eyes over the shelves. “A bottle of whiskey. Don’t care which kind. I’m paying,” she added, when the woman hesitated.

The whiskey sloshed heavy in her hands as she walked back, the incense still lingering on her clothes. On a whim, she turned, headed deeper into the territory, heading towards the street lined with tiny restaurants with barely more than a couple tables indoors, where at night folding tables spilled into the street and the smell of fried stuff, rice, tempura, and noodles, and grilled kebab attracted a small crowd. It was too early for any of that yet, but she took up a spot at a restaurant that had windows facing the street and got french fries.

She drank, then spat it out, wiping her mouth off in disgust. It burned like she’d swallowed acid, like she’d poured ash onto her tongue. Then she tried again, just a small sip. And another, when the first one had gone down.

It didn’t take too long for her to black out.

* * *

Her head pounded along with her pulse.

  


Why had she woken up?

  


Someone was talking.

  


God, it hurt so much. She groaned, and the man stopped. She was on the couch in her workshop.

“What the fuck’s going on,” she said, trying to focus on the shape in front of her. He was one of her people, by the glint of silver she could see on his wrist. She tried to sit up, but it made her head feel like it was in a vice grip. She stopped getting up, now stuck in an awkward half-position. “Fuck you.”

He took a step back, his face filling with worry. “I’m sorry, Ms. Bakuda, but—”

“Stay still,” she said, forcing her words out. It was an effort, but she wasn’t going to slur them. “Stay fucking still.”

He stayed still.

“Bitch,” she said, slowly getting up more, mostly to herself.

“I didn’t hear what you—”

Bakuda touched her rings together. The man dropped to the floor, silent.

“Shut the fuck up,” she said, glaring blearily at him. She sat there, waiting for the fog in her head to clear away.

She’d just used a pain bomb for no good reason.

A rush of feelings bubbled up through the pain in her head and she couldn’t keep track of them, couldn’t handle them. Guilt, but it was justified, but did he deserve that much, but she couldn’t show weakness, but she’d just— The thoughts went round and round, one swallowing another in an ouroboros, and she was just frozen where she was, not doing anything, her head _still_ pounding now that she was upright. He writhed in pain, spasmed, teeth chattering, pressing together—there was blood, he’d bitten his tongue. Veins stood out, muscles more obvious as he tensed and released. He finally screamed. She felt a strange sense of deja vu.

He looked like Amurao.

She might have been imagining it. Maybe it was his nose. Or was it his eyes, how they flickered every which way, how he blinked and clawed at his own skin?

Did Amurao even do that?

She couldn’t help herself. She laughed. It started as a snort, then it was a chuckle, then it was a thin, high-pitched laugh. She hated it but she still laughed, her screeching voice drowned out by the gurgling screams of the man.

“Someone take him away,” she said, after a long while, once she’d stopped being doubled over, and her headache reasserted herself. God that had felt good. Didn’t even know she needed that. She shook her head to herself, then winced from the nails in her brain. Two men came running in. One of them froze when they saw the one who’d woken her. “And I need—” She paused, waiting for the spike of pain to go away. “I need hangover shit.”

“Yes, Ms. Bakuda,” the other man muttered. He was more of a teenager, wasn’t he. Maybe seventeen. God, that was something. Better than drinking. True fear, that’s what is was. Just like Lung had told her to. It was effective. Efficient.

After she’d had food (some sort of broth with rice) and taken a couple advil, she felt like she wasn’t dying anymore. She felt the boy who had brought her the food was still hovering. “What do you want?” she demanded.

“The other guy, the one you, uh—”

“The point.”

He shuddered. “He wanted you to know that Oni Lee wants to see you miss,” he said, the words spilling out in a jumble.

Bakuda sighed. “Alright.”

“May I, uh—”

“Yeah, do whatever.”

He picked up the tray and nearly ran out of the workshop’s main room. She didn’t really care.

* * *

“Bakuda. The boss was captured last night,” Oni Lee said.

“Shit,” she breathed. She felt dread, the kind you got in the back of your head when you walked under a crane lifting a heavy steel girder, like it would crash down on you at any moment. “Who?”

“A new, insect-controlling cape,” Oni Lee said. “Along with Armsmaster.”

“How?”

“I do not know.”

Bakuda paced. “What do we do?”

“The rank and file are unstable. You must keep them in line.”

“Not you?”

“No.”

Bakuda leaned against her hand, sitting in a chair. The headache wasn’t entirely gone. “Lung kept them loyal with fear.”

“Yes.”

“They hate each other’s guts.” The ruins of three or four local gangs was hardly a recipe for stability.

“Yes. Bad… history.” She wondered if that had been a joke. “There are some factions within the gang still. The ABB will splinter.”

She heard meaning in the silence after his words. She needed the ABB. They both needed the ABB. “So. Keep the ABB together, short term. Get the boss back.”

“Yes.”

It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. “Do we even have manpower?”

“Little,” Oni Lee said. His blank mask betrayed none of his expressions, though Bakuda suspected that beneath it simply lay another mask, this one of his face. “Most of the loyal faction were severely injured last night. I am able to command perhaps a dozen capable ABB.”

“Shit,” she muttered. “Let me think. Call your men.”

Oni Lee nodded sharply and disappeared, leaving a cloud of chalky dust fluttering to the floor. She cradled her head in her hands. Before she’d used that shock net grenade on—some dude, she thought she remembered that their attitudes had been borderline disrespectful. But after that, and after the pain bracelets? They moved snappily, didn’t dare say anything to her. Things just worked. She needed something like that, for the ABB who weren’t loyal, something they couldn’t just take off. Ideas popped up in her head.

She could implant the bomb. Somewhere. Her job was so much harder, Lung could just flex a little, break shit, shoot fire. Not in the limbs or stuff, there wasn’t much space there, they could chop it off, or set it off accidentally. Open heart surgery was a little difficult, a lot messy. Maybe their abdominal cavity?

Or… the head. There was something visceral about that. Puns aside, could she…? It didn’t seem like it would work, but if she just stitched them up afterwards? Maybe some she could shove up their nose, ear canal… she could mix it up. Depending on the size of the bomb, of course. It would inspire fear. She wasn’t good at talking, she didn’t have charisma. It wouldn’t work. This would.

Should she do it?

It was all she had. She needed to succeed.

That was enough.

* * *

The first round she only did one head-bomb, and the rest were the easier nose or ear canal ones. It would be tricky to juggle anesthesia for so many people, while also doing a procedure she’d never tried before. Sitting on her workbench, she watched the four ABB on the couch wake up—all of them teenaged boys, two with shaved heads and two with longer hair.

“Welcome back to the waking world,” she said, her mask translating her words into its familiar, hissing rattle. There really wasn’t a better way to put it, so she told them bluntly: “You have bombs in your heads now.”

Reactions varied, she learned, upon being told that one was now the proud owner of one head-bomb. One disbelieved, staring. One started babbling incoherently—all she could make out in his words that run together was _please_. One buried his head in his hands. And the last…?

“You _fucker_ ,” he spat, stumbling to his feet, still unsteady from the drugs she’d put into him. She could tell he was the kind of person to throw themselves at someone, even if they couldn’t win.

“Don’t be so hasty. I can—” Before she could finish, he stumbled at her, arms reaching for her neck, rage scrawled over his face. She’d had hopes—had wished nobody would do that, forcing her hand like this. Time to install the fear of certainties in them. Mentally bracing herself, she touched her toe-rings together.

Something beeped once. His head disappeared entirely; the corpse fell forward. It was quiet enough that she could hear the _thump_ as it hit the floor, splashing the light carpet red. It was only a little hard to bear.

“Look, as I was _trying_ to say, I can set off the bombs with a thought.” Bakuda hopped off her desk, looked around at the three who were left. “I’m not going to do it without a reason. Or maybe I will. But I probably won’t. You just need to listen to me.” As long as they listened, she wouldn’t have to set off any more.

“I…” The one on the left, the one who’d been quiet so far, trailed off. “What do you need us to do?”

* * *

She soon realized the seven—six? five?—stages of grief weren’t too far off. People reacted in the same small numbers of ways—those who plead, those who cried, those who tried to fight. There were too many people who fought. So many bombs set off, in so many exotic ways, not all of them leaving an intact body to bury. Sometimes there was collateral damage. It didn’t matter too much, in the end. She spent hours and hours doing surgery, briefing the ABB, giving orders… When she was done with the rest of the gang, she started telling the survivors to bring their friends, their family. Why hadn’t she done this before? It worked so well. Lung would be so proud. The ABB was the largest it had been since it was created.

“Have fun,” she told the last person leaving—a girl, with long black hair. She just sobbed. Bakuda watched her back as she left, then turned away.

* * *

She thought the ABB had been a rising phoenix. With Lung back, it had seemed there would be no way to stop them. But perhaps the ABB’d had more in common with a candle that burned too brightly, or a star going nova, burning through thousands and thousands of years of hydrogen in a single supermassive event, collapsing upon itself in the aftermath. Every cape in the city had turned against them—the Empire, Coil, Faultline, the PRT… She’d stayed up nights talking strategy with Oni Lee and Lung, built bombs almost as fast as she sent them out, but no matter what they did, the numbers went down. Safehouse after stockpile after lab fell beneath the relentless attacks, day and night. It felt like she was holding an oil-slick rope, desperately trying to gain traction. But it slipped away.

It was just her, now, and one ABB in a derelict shack by the coastline, maybe somewhere you parked your boats when they weren’t busy accumulating rust and barnacles, where the sea gently slapped against the concrete pier and sent up the smell of salt and decay. She knew she couldn’t win, not anymore. She’d killed too many people, destroyed too much property. The Birdcage was all that was left for her. Atrocities, was that the word?

She had one last bomb, the largest she’d ever made. Could it be her magnum opus, even if it was thrown together with parts that didn’t really fit, chemicals that weren’t even second or third tier? Either way, it could fry the coastline. Wipe Brockton Bay off the map. The heroes would have to let her go, and she could get a new start, maybe. Before she could put the finishing touches on it, she was interrupted by the sound of heavily armored vans driving up to the pier. What she presumed were PRT officers quickly surrounded the structure. Armsmaster was here, too.

“We know you’re in there,” Armsmaster announced, his voice amplified by a megaphone of some sort. “This is your last chance to surrender.”

“Wanna see what happens when the whole Eastern coast has no electronics?” she yelled. “It can do that. Cleaner than any nuke, more efficient. Just takes a button-press! Back the _fuck_ off!” She had her hands buried deep in the bomb’s guts. Almost, almost—

The world jerked, a discontinuity in the function. The next moment, the world went black. She felt dense anti-Tinker cuffs around her wrists, and a blindfold sat on her face.

* * *

Honestly, the Birdcage wasn’t too bad. Sure, there wasn’t any sun, but when had she needed that, anyways? Glaistig Uaine was weird, but she also seemed fair, and even seemed to like her. A little. Whatever the hell _I wait for your coming departure from the dance with something less than indifference, but duty remains_ meant.

Fixing televisions was an interesting challenge—she only had her mechanical knowledge to go off of, no ideas that came popping fully-finished into her mind, just her and her problem-solving skills. It was like a puzzle! Plus, if she did succeed, people actually appreciated her. She was mostly left alone outside of that. It was so much more simple.

She could probably get used to this.

* * *

_Postscript_

[The following is a transcript of a personal recording.]

> **JANE HINTERSON** : So she wasn’t a violent person?  
>  **JINZLER YOUNGS** : No, not when I knew her.  
>  **JANE** : Bakuda murdered at least thirty five people, and contributed to the deaths of hundreds more. Near the end, she was a ranting, raving madwoman, according to reports.  
>  **JINZLER** : She... [PAUSE] That’s not a question.  
>  **JANE** : It sounded like you still think of Bakuda as a friend. Is that right? [PAUSE] Does this mean you believe she was justified in what she did, that she was understandable?  
>  **JINZLER** : I never implied that what Ellen did was right. Just that she’s a person, too.  
>  **JANE** : I’m only trying to get the full picture. I don’t want to misrepresent your thoughts.  
>  **JINZLER** : Right. I just don’t see it that way.  
>  **JANE** : Can you explain?  
>  **JINZLER** : See, you’re trying to, I don’t know, get a story here. You want me to tell you I should’ve seen the warning signs, or crucify her for her sins. But that’s not going to happen. I’m not going to give you what you want.  
>  **JANE** : I’m hurt by your accusations.  
>  **JINZLER** : Yeah, me too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: …
> 
> Thank you, Harbin, Lyova, Gaia for helping make BAP happen. This is the last main chapter of _Bubbles Always Pop_. The next and final chapter is the Epilogue. Thanks Neer for the look at the draft.


	6. Epilogue

**CORNELL BOMBER BAKUDA—A BREAKDOWN**  
_June 9, 2011_

 _By Jane Hinterson, Ithaca, New York —_ Sources earlier this month reported that Bakuda, notorious bomber of Cornell University and, later, Brockton Bay (related: Warlords of the City), was murdered by her own boss, Lung, in the Birdcage. However, despite the widespread media coverage, little is known about what really drove this supervillain to hold Cornell hostage. The _Times_ interviewed friends, family and other individuals related to the incident in an attempt to shed light on what really happened, what went so wrong. READ MORE >>>

Jinzler remembered reading this article when it had just come out. She hadn’t been able to read too much of it without X’ing out of the web page in disgust. The fact that it had survived the apocalypse gave her mixed feelings, but in this case it was probably a good thing. She shuffled through the papers—printed out at a library, because there were very few mobile computers available, even to someone with access to the higher levels of what was left of the government.

“I didn’t really know her, you know? She wasn’t really someone who reached out. I saw her in class, mostly, and sometimes around campus, but I never thought she could—yeah.” Katie Kim shivers, as she thinks about the bomb Tinker. “It was really scary. She seemed so angry.”

Another classmate recalls, “She was pretty quiet. Didn’t speak up in class a lot. She was… normal, I guess.”

]Her instructor, Dr. Amurao, a tenured professor at Cornell University, School of Business, had only scathing words for the late Ellen Chua. “She was under pressure, couldn’t make the cut, so she lashed out. She wanted someone or something to blame. Powers just enabled her.” He adds, “I tried to help her. [... I] hoped to ease the impact on her academics—let her know that one failure didn’t mean the end of the world. I was fully supportive.”

The usual talk of how nobody saw it coming, how perhaps her status as an second generation immigrant might’ve affected her. Tired, rehashed arguments. She found the part where she was quoted. Even though she’d sat down with the reporter for almost half an hour, of all she’d said all that was quoted was:

Jinzler Youngs, the brave young woman who tried to stop Bakuda, said, “I didn’t really think. I just hoped I could keep her from doing something she couldn’t undo. I think it would’ve worked.”

The other things she’d said weren’t in the article, because it wasn’t part of the narrative that the reporter had wanted to push. She had a copy of the recording on a USB stick that, just like her, pulled through Gold Morning.

When reached for a statement, the PRT said, “While we cannot comment on individual cases, we consider all cape incidents as opportunities to improve our crisis point management.” The spokesperson emphasized, “Villains are often unstable and easy to set off. When faced with a supervillain, the best policy is to first extract yourself from the situation. Only then should you report the incident to the PRT.”

She had other documents, too, copies of once-classified cape profiles, PRT internal documents, and other stuff which she could’ve been tried and found guilty for possessing. If the US Government still existed. Her collection was entirely legal, now, but it still felt like she was stepping on the PRT’s grave just by having these.

“Ms. Youngs?”

Jinzler collected her papers into a stack and stood, straightening her dark blazer. The man at the reception lead her down a hall identical to every other in that Warden base, past evenly-spaced doors, tiny labels on them the only distinguisher. The sound of her low heels clicked against the tile, echoing throughout the hall, giving the building a distinct sense of emptiness.

“You remember the precautions, correct?”

Jinzler nodded. “Yes. I’m the last person to try and…” There was a word she was looking for, bolded on the introductory guide, repeated as a common thread throughout the briefing. “Destabilize her.” That was the word. Destabilize.

“She isn’t the same person as before—“

“I know. I read the guidelines.” That had come off as a little harsh. She tried to soften it. “Thank you.”

They stopped outside a room labelled INTERVIEW ROOM 109E. Inside the door was a dark space, and a pane of one-way glass that showed a room, and a table littered with playing cards. A tall, lanky man with messy red hair sat across from a shorter woman. Asian. Ellen. Or, almost.

The woman chewed on her upper lip, intent on the card game. “Fuck,” she finally said, her voice coming through the speakers. “Fuck this shit.” The man smirked. The woman brandished her finger at him. “Don’t you even start, you dipshit piece of trash. I—”

The man held his hands up placatingly. “You were just going easy on me.”

“Right. _That’s_ why I lost the last five goddamn rounds. I’m going to go do something I’m good at.” The woman stood up.

“Yeah, but you also have to stay here til your visitor comes.” He grinned. “It’s just you and me til then.”

“Go to hell.”

“There’s another one?”

The receptionist knocked on the door, then opened it. “Your visitor is here, Ella.”

The girl scrambled out of her chair, looking towards them with eyes wide. The red-haired man, on the other hand, gathered his cards and winnings in a bag and walked out a door on the far side, waving. “Have fun,” he said. Ella gave him the middle finger. The motion was too quick to have been anything other than impulse. The door closed behind her.

“Hey,” Jinzler said, looking her in the eye. Her features weren’t quite how she remembered her. Less serious, more annoyed, somehow even paler. And very short, by a head or more. But her eyes were still that brilliant blue. “I’m Jinzler Youngs.” She offered her hand. Recognition flitted over her face.

“I’m Ella,” she said, taking it. “Don’t really have a last name. I don’t use my—previous me’s?—name anymore.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry for your loss.” The words were too formal, a little awkward, said by someone who wasn’t used to saying niceties.

“It was a long time ago.” Jinzler smiled a little. “You’re different, but feel the same, if that makes sense.” Shrug.

“Yeah. I get it.” Ella half-shrugged. “It’s weird. Like a dream, I remember so much that I did, except it’s all out of order and sometimes all I have is feeling to go off of. Emotions. Sometimes I think I remembered something new, but—do you know, uh, how the brain fabricates memories? Makes shit up if there’s nothing there?”

“I’ve heard of that.”

“Yeah, so, I’d tell my therapist that I remembered something and he’d suggest maybe it couldn’t have happened but it came from something similar. Mixed up with other memories. Don’t force it, he said.” She fiddled with a piece of metal she had produced from somewhere. “I kinda remember your face, though. Unless I’m fake-remembering it, there’s an, uh, a positive association with it. ”

“Pretty clinical.”

Ella shrugged. “It’s also true. My therapist said that I can probably trust associations. It sucks, that I can remember some of the worse things I’ve did better than good stuff. Like, uh.” Ella wet her lips. “Nevermind. But you’re definitely up there. With the good, that is. Really weird.” The metal went _tic_ , _tic_.

Jinzler shrugged, and looked around. There wasn’t much to see. It was an interview room, with all the attendant interior design an interview room entailed: beige walls, a folding desk, some chairs, all chosen to be inoffensive. But what she wanted to say was easier when she wasn’t looking Ella in the eye. “I saved some articles, an interview I had with a reporter after… after old-you died. Spent a couple favors to try and scrape the barrel of whatever records are left—you know, cape files, warden’s notes. PRT stuff. I hope it helps you figure out who you are, to help contextualize your memories.” She set down the stack of papers on the table, and fished the USB stick from her pocket and handed it to Ella. “It doesn’t show what you were thinking, but it’s a start.”

“Thanks. It means a lot.” Ella made the stick disappear into her pocket.

“You’re welcome,” Jinzler said.

Silence. Neither of them knew what to talk about. Jinzler didn’t know how much Ella remembered; Ella wasn’t entirely sure who Jinzler was. Not at all surprising. Nothing more than an expected outcome.

“Did you pass?” Ella suddenly said, eyes on her metal, fingers toying with something on the surface, moving jerkily.

“Pass? Oh.” Jinzler blinked wetness out of her eyes. “Yes. I did. I don’t know if you remember—everyone always said, Cs get degrees. God, isn’t _that_ true.”

“That’s good.” Ella smiled. “Very good. I’m glad to hear it.”

Jinzler smiled back. “So… plans for the future?”

“I don’t really know. Hang out with the Wardens, go to all my sessions. Figure out who I am, before I try to do something. I don’t want to make the same mistakes I did. Again, I mean.”

Jinzler hummed. “That makes sense.”

“You?”

“I’m working with the city government. Logistics. Procuring and allocating resources, talking with risk managers, general managerial stuff. Takes a lot to build a new world.” It felt jarringly impersonal to leave it there, so she added, “Well, that’s what I tell everyone. It’s not as glorious as it sounds—it’s mostly filling out paperwork, chasing people down to talk, then filling out more paperwork when they inevitably forget about what they promised.”

“The world is just a bigger group project,” Ella said.

Jinzler chuckled. “Have you ever argued with a thinker? It’s the worst thing ever—they think they literally know everything and they _always_ do this thing where they roll their eyes.” She demonstrated. “The thinker-eye-roll.”

Ella’s lips twitched, pressing into a line, struggling not to smile. “I know the look,” she finally said.

Had she broken through an invisible, yet evidently real wall between them? After that, Ella seemed more at ease, straying from the usual inconsequential, inoffensive small talk topics into something that more resembled a natural conversation.

“You quit smoking,” she said at one point.

“Can’t get any cigarettes in the apocalypse,” Jinzler replied. “How’d you know, though?”

“Do you have any idea how much it stinks?”

“Ouch,” Jinzler said, laughing quietly. “Right in my heart, Ella.”

“Better than your lungs.”

She had to concede that point.

“How hard was it for you to meet me?” Ella asked, later. “How do they decide who to let in?”

“Not very hard. There’s not much of a formal process. Mostly, I talked to a guy I knew who knows a guy who knows a guy, got briefed on the situation. It helps that I knew you as a civilian.”

“Oh,” she said, a hint of sadness in her eyes. “You’re my first visitor, you know that? The other...” Clones, Jinzler knew. “The other guys get a lot more.”

She frowned. “They keep you on-site?”

“Not really, but they said they wanted to make sure I would avoid bad influences. Like, how I—how Ellen did things? I might do them too? And like it’d be pretty bad if I decided to do things like make bombs they don’t want me to make or then maybe, you know—” She spoke faster and faster, the words tumbling from her like a confession.

Out of impulse, Jinzler hugged her. Ella froze, then carefully wrapped her arms around Jinzler’s back. She could feel her hot breath on the shoulder of her button-up shirt, but didn’t say anything. They stayed like that for a while.

“Hey,” Ella said, voice weak, “if they let you in, it can’t be that effective, right? It means they got shi—poor screening.”

Jinzler pulled back, arching a brow at how Ella had just censored herself. She didn’t mention it, instead saying, “You calling me a bad influence?” Ella’s look was the very picture of defiance, the facade only betrayed by the slightest way her mouth quirked up. “The nerve.” She laughed.

Someone knocked on the door, startling the two. Jinzler checked her watch—the visit was supposed to be only fifteen minutes, but she was also pretty sure she’d came in half an hour ago. That was nice of the receptionist. She needed to remember his name. “I enjoyed talking to you, Ella. I have to go, now.”

“Okay,” Ella said, rubbing her eyes.

“I’ll come back next week, if that works.”

“That would be nice,” Ella said. “Really nice.”

  
  
  
(End)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you Kyakan and Lyova for fact-checking, and everyone at PCT (but particularly Nihilistic Janitor, Harbin, and Forgery) for helping me put together this last chapter of Bubbles Always Pop. As usual. Thank you, everyone, for reading BAP. It's been a ride.


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